Edmund can feel the hands clamped around his neck. He knows they are suffocating him, strangling him, and he knows that he cannot fight this. Blood seeps from the sticky gash on his forehead, and the rain washes into his eyes – both combined blind his vision, sap his strength. He is tired, bitterly tired, tired beyond any imagination. He does not think he has ever felt this way, and he has felt a lot.
The man – the woman – the thing – Edmund doesn’t know what it is, can’t make out the form, and he’s fairly certain its physical appearance has nothing to do with its true nature or even gender – is screaming at him in another tongue, in his own tongue, in tongues that aren’t even spoken with tongues. He wants to sleep, wants to die, wants this pain and tiredness to end, wants to feel nothing, be nothing, forever and ever.
